(I am shopping with my girlfriend. As we head to the quick check-out, a woman with her cart full of goods slowly passes over the sign “15 items or less” and continues. My girlfriend and I are the next in line as nobody else is waiting, and an automated system calls for someone to come to the next available register. Suddenly, my girlfriend turns to me and says, pointing behind me:)

Girlfriend: “She has way more than fifteen items.”

(I turn around, and that woman is there. I gently point to the sign:)

Me: “It’s fifteen items or less only, ma’am.”

Woman: “Oh? Really? I didn’t see the sign. Sorry.”

(She turned around; and kept saying, way too many times, that she was sorry and she never saw the sign. We turned around to face the area of the registers. The guy operating the first one looked at us and raised both thumbs, mouthing, “Thank you.”)

(I work in a store in a new department that they just opened. The store is now bigger with this new department, but the storage area is not, so we put the merchandise that we can’t place on the racks in shelves just on top. A woman has an item in her hand and is looking at our shelves with determination…)

Me: “Hi there. How may I help you?”

Customer: “Yes, I need this item—” *pointing to the one in her hand* “—do you have more up there?”

Me: *looking on the rack, there are about five of them right in front of her* “Well, I know that there are those ones, and maybe two or three more up there. How many do you need?”

Customer: “Only one.”

Me: *confused* “Do you need another color than that?”

Customer: “No! Only one just like that!“

Me: “Okay? Is this one broken?”

Customer: *yelling* “Oh, you don’t understand!”

(She then left without the item… I still don’t understand.)

(I am a service representative for a large copier company. I’m at an office doing maintenance on their copier. It’s a large, ten-foot-long machine with a sorter and stapler module. I have covers removed, new and old parts here and there, my toolbox wide open, and tools scattered over the floor and on the machine. The machine is turned on, but the display shows, “Diagnostics,” instead of, “Enter number of copies,” with interlock cheaters to compensate for the open panels. I’ve just finished the main maintenance and the copier is ready to be put back in normal mode, but I have to go back to my car to get some more parts to finish the job properly and clean everything up. I’m gone five minutes. When I come back, I hear the copier cycling down as I enter the room and find a secretary about to make copies.)

Secretary: “Oh, sorry… Were you working on it?”

Me: “Er… Yes… Didn’t you see the display with ‘diagnostics’ instead of ‘ready to copy?'”

Secretary: “Yes, but I simply turned the copier off, then on, and it cleared. You should put a sign not to use it when you do this.”

Me: *politely* “You mean to tell me that the open doors, the missing panels, the open tool box, the tools on top of the copiers and on the floor, old parts, rags everywhere on and around the copier, and the diagnostic display… all of those were not enough of a sign?”

(She grunted, took her papers, and stormed out.)

(I work in a call center for a company that sells protection plans online. When it comes to watches, we will repair the watch if it is over a certain price, and if it’s a cheap watch, we only issue a check to reimburse it. Keep in mind we only cover mechanical failures coming from the dial; we don’t cover water damage or drops.)

Me: “Thank you for calling [Company]. My name is [My Name]. How may I assist you?”

Customer: “Hi, I want to file a claim on a watch.”

Me: “No problem. I’ll be glad to help you with that. May I have your information so I may access your file?”

(She gives me her information, and I ask her for the price of her watch.)

Customer: “$3.78.”

Me: *pause* “You’re filing a claim for a $3.78 watch?”

Customer: “Yeah.”

Me: “Okay, what exactly is the issue with the watch?”

Customer: “I wore it in the shower and it stopped working.”

Me: *pause* “Is it waterproof?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “I’m sorry, miss, but I will have to deny your claim due to accidental damage handling.”

Customer: “Oh, well, this is stupid.” *hangs up*

(Even if we had taken her claim, the shipping label we would have sent to her would have cost more than her watch.)

A couple years ago, I was tasked with buying advertising space through Google to promote our company’s video-on-demand service. However, after a few days, our ads were suspended, because we had to submit proof that we had the rights to use some intellectual property that belonged to movie studios; our ads featured lots of popular film characters. I told my boss what happened, and suggested we go ahead and get in touch with our contacts at the studios as soon as we could to obtain written proof that we could use the characters, My boss was having none of it. The way he saw it, Google was screwing us over, and my job was to get them to immediately reverse their policy-based decision and run our ads.

Unsurprisingly, I was not successful in doing so, although I had a very productive call with Google. They gave me further information and guidelines about their policy, and told me how to get the situation sorted out as quickly as possible. I told my boss about it, but he said that surely I wasn’t insistent enough, and called me into his office to show me “how it’s done.”

Cue the most cringe-worthy moment of my life, during which I sat in front of my boss while he called the reception desk at Google headquarters and (unsuccessfully) harassed the receptionist for 20 minutes, asking to be put through to Larry Page. When he finally gave up, he just told me to do whatever it takes to get the ads up and running as soon as possible, at which point I just followed Google’s guidelines as instructed. Wouldn’t you know it, the ads were up and running less than a day later.

This was one of many crazy things that happened at that company during the time I worked there. They were a very small outfit, yet they always expected to be treated like one of the giants out there — and spent money they didn’t have, accordingly. I smelled disaster coming and quit just a few months after this, and they went bankrupt less than a year later.